The Mesopotamian Marshes, called the Ahwar in Arabic, are a vast reed-and-water wetland on the floodplains of the Tigris and Euphrates in southern Iraq, spilling into south-western Iran and a corner of northern Kuwait. Bounded by the cities of Basra, Nasiriyah and Amarah, they once covered about 20,000 km² (7,700 sq mi) and were the largest wetland ecosystem in western Eurasia, made up of three linked areas: the Central, Hammar and Hawizeh marshes. The landscape is one of shallow lakes, channels and dense reed beds, classed as flooded grassland. Drainage schemes, accelerated in the 1990s, had reduced them to about 10% of their original extent before 2003; they have partly recovered since, and in July 2016 four marsh areas were inscribed with the ancient cities of Uruk, Ur and Eridu as the UNESCO World Heritage Site "The Ahwar of Southern Iraq". Above all, the marshes are a homeland: for thousands of years people have lived on them, fishing, farming rice and herding water buffalo.
Marsh Arab villages, from 500,000 people in the 1950s to 20,000
The people of the marshes are known as the Marsh Arabs, or Ahwaris. They have also been called Ma'dan and Shroog, both now often considered derogatory. They belong to many tribes and confederations, among them the Al Bu Muhammad, the Feraighat and the Shaghanbah, and most are Twelver Shia Muslims. Small Mandaean communities lived alongside them, often working as boat builders and craftsmen. Their origins are debated: some scholars link them to the ancient Sumerians through shared farming and building methods, others to the Zutt who settled in lower Iraq in the 8th and 9th centuries, or to Aramaic-speaking Nabataeans of medieval Iraq.
The marshes have long been a place of refuge. Escaped slaves sheltered there during the Zanj Rebellion, and in the 10th and 11th centuries the marshes were the base of a small state, the Batihah, founded by 'Imran ibn Shahin. In the 1950s the Marsh Arabs numbered an estimated 500,000. A typical family home was a reed house a little over 2 m wide, about 6 m long and just under 3 m high, built at the water's edge or on an artificial island of reeds called a kibasha. A more permanent island of layered reeds and mud was a dibin. Houses had a door at each end: one half for the family, the other to shelter animals in bad weather. Many villages could be reached only by boat.
Water buffalo, reed mats and the binni: how the Ahwar fed southern Iraq
Marsh society divided broadly by occupation. One group bred and raised water buffalo; the other cultivated rice, barley, wheat and pearl millet, and kept some sheep and cattle. Buffalo herders moved their animals through the reeds with the seasons, and in the low-water months they drove buffalo through the reed beds to open channels that boats then kept clear. The rich milk of marsh buffalo and cows goes into geymar, the clotted cream that Iraqis eat for breakfast with bread and honey or date syrup.
Rice was grown in small plots cleared in April and sown in mid-May, with the farming seasons traditionally timed by the rising and setting of stars such as the Pleiades and Sirius. Fishing filled out the diet. Ahwaris speared barbel, especially the binni (Mesopotamichthys sharpeyi), and sometimes used datura poison; netting on a large scale was long treated as a low-status trade left to a separate tribe, the Berbera. Even so, by the early 1990s up to 60% of the fish caught in Iraq's inland waters came from the marshes. In the later 20th century a third trade spread: weaving reed mats for sale. Weavers often earned far more than farm labourers, and though first looked down upon, the work gradually became respectable.
All of this depended on the three marsh areas staying wet. The Central Marshes, about 3,000 km² between the two rivers, were fed by Tigris distributaries south of Amarah and held permanent lakes such as Hawr Umm al-Binni, about 3 m deep. The Hammar Marshes south of the Euphrates covered about 2,800 km² of permanent marsh and lake, swelling to about 4,500 km² in floods; in summer, islands emerging around Hammar Lake were farmed. The Hawizeh Marshes east of the Tigris, about 3,000 km², straddle the border with Iran, where they are called Hawr al-Azim and are fed by the Karkheh River. People there still cross between the Iraqi and Iranian sides by canoe.
The mudhif and the mashoof: building and travelling with reeds
The marshes' grandest building is the mudhif, a guesthouse paid for and kept by a village sheikh for visitors, weddings and funerals. It is made entirely from reeds: thick bundled columns are set into the ground at opposing angles and bent into parabolic arches, then covered with woven mats, some perforated to let in light and air. Its entrance always faces Mecca, and the number of arches reflects the tribe and family. A carved image of a building in the same form, dating to about 3300 BCE, was found at Uruk and is now in the British Museum, so the design has been in use for at least 5,000 years. A mudhif needs rebuilding about every ten years. Gertrude Bell, in a letter to her father, described one as a perfectly regular yellow tunnel 50 yards long.
Travel meant the mashoof, a long, narrow canoe slim enough to slip between the reeds, along with the tarada. One was found at Ur, and Sumerian and Babylonian cylinder reliefs depict them. Every family, children included, used a mashoof to cut reeds, fish, hunt, tend buffalo and carry passengers. Traditional mashoof building is now close to extinction: fewer than 50 builders remain in southern Iraq, mainly in Basra, Hillah and Kufa, as motor skiffs have taken over. With the marshes partly reflooded, the boats have slowly returned, and so have mashoof races, notably for women.
Al-Chibayish and the drainage years, 1951–2003
One well-documented marsh town is Al-Chibayish, on the Euphrates in Dhi Qar governorate, a centre of the Banu Asad tribe and of mashoof building. The Iraqi anthropologist Shakir Mustafa Salim made it the subject of the first extensive scholarly ethnography of marsh life, Marsh Dwellers of the Euphrates Delta. In the 1950s the explorer Wilfred Thesiger lived with the Marsh Arabs for months at a time over seven years, from 1951 to 1958, and described their life in The Marsh Arabs (1964). The Scottish naturalist Gavin Maxwell travelled with him in 1956 and wrote A Reed Shaken by the Wind (1957). Many of the places they described no longer exist.
Drainage began with farming plans. The British engineer Frank Haigh's report of 1951 proposed canals, sluices and dikes on the lower Tigris and Euphrates, and work on the Third River, or Main Outfall Drain, began in 1953. Parts of the Hammar were drained in 1985 for oil exploration, and work on the Hawizeh sped up during the Iran–Iraq War. After the 1991 uprisings, the government of Saddam Hussein accelerated drainage of the Central and Hammar marshes to evict the Shia communities sheltering there. The 565 km Third River was completed in 1992, joined by the Mother of Battles canal, the 240 km Loyalty to the Leader canal and the Glory River, which together diverted water away from the marshes. Villages were attacked and burnt. By the 2003 invasion of Iraq, about 90% of the marshland had gone; the Central and Hammar marshes were nearly dry and only 35% of the Hawizeh remained.
The human cost was on the same scale. The Marsh Arab population in Iraq fell to perhaps 20,000, while 80,000 to 120,000 fled to Iran. By 2003 only about 1,600 people were thought to be living on traditional dibins. Al-Chibayish, attacked by helicopters, fell from about 11,000 people in 1955 to fewer than 6,000 by 2003.
After 2003, residents broke open the dikes, and a four-year drought ended that same year. By late 2006, 58% of the original marsh area was wet again, and Al-Chibayish quintupled in size between 2001 and 2009, reaching an estimated 30,416 people.
Uruk, Ur and the 2016 World Heritage listing: a living landscape under drought
The UNESCO site inscribed in July 2016 joins seven places: the Huwaizah (Hawizeh), Central, East Hammar and West Hammar marshes, and the archaeological cities of Uruk, Ur and Tell Eridu. The listing ties the reed houses and buffalo herds to the Sumerian cities that rose on the same plain in the 4th millennium BCE. Tourism has followed in a small way. Visitors paddle the channels and eat in a mudhif, and the Iraqi-American engineer Azzam Alwash, who founded the group Nature Iraq after 2003 and won the Goldman Environmental Prize in 2013, set up an eco-camp offering reed-house stays and breakfasts of buffalo cream and reed-baked bread.
The water that makes this possible keeps shrinking. Recovery peaked at about 75% of the original area in 2008, then fell back to 58% of pre-drainage levels by spring 2015. Dams upstream in Turkey, Syria and Iran have reduced flows, and Iraq gives priority to cities along the Tigris and the Shatt al-Arab. Salinity has risen to 15,000 parts per million in places, against 300 to 500 ppm in the 1980s, harming buffalo herding and fishing; the marshes, which once supplied 60% of Iraq's fish, now supply only a single-digit share. After record low rainfall in 2021, many buffalo farmers have been forced to move, and the three great marshes have broken into about ten smaller ones.
The marshes are the end of two great rivers, so their future is decided upstream: follow the water down the Tigris and the Euphrates and its ancient cities, or set the Ahwar in the wider landscape of Iraq's geography.